China's Top Universities Shine In Global Ranking Education Articles

China’s program of investment in higher education over the past decades is beginning to pay dividends, said higher education data specialists QS.

The organization’s annual QS World University Rankings by Subject, released Wednesday, showed that among 36 academic disciplines evaluated, seven Chinese universities made the global top 50.

Ben Sowter, head of research, said the success of China’s universities fits into a wider shift in the global balance of power, with Asian institutions emerging as genuine competitors to the U.S. and U.K., especially in the academic disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The report also said that Hong Kong universities displayed increased international competitiveness with a strong presence across the subjects.

There have been rises and falls across subjects for universities in China and Hong Kong, with not enough factors to identify broad trends in either direction, Sowter explained. But the overall movement is clear.

“What manifests itself as a very clear trend, however, is that institutions in the region are much more strongly represented than last year, with 70 additional places across the subjects occupied by universities from China and Hong Kong,” he said in an e-mailed comment.

“This perhaps indicates a deepening of quality across the sector in mainland China – in other words a growing capacity to offer a world class education at a world class university to more students in more subjects.”

In total, 2,186 institutions across the globe were ranked in at least one subject.

Mainland China was the fifth most represented country in the global rankings, and the top nation in Asia, followed by Japan.

Peking University led the pack of mainland schools within the top 50 range, followed by Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Peking University

The University of Hong Kong (HKU) was the third best performing university in Asia, after the National University of Singapore and The University of Tokyo.

American universities dominated the rankings in terms of the number of subjects in which they lead, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard taking the lion’s share of top places.

The rankings are based on the expert opinion of 85,062 academics, who identified the leading institutions within their field and region of expertise.